A major national survey of families affected by cancer has found that one in four families say the experience led a family member with the disease to use up all or most of their savings, and one in eight say they borrowed money from relatives. The illness also made it harder for some to find and keep health insurance--with about one in 10 saying they couldn’t buy health insurance because they had been diagnosed with cancer, and 6% saying they lost their coverage as a result of the disease.
Conducted jointly by USA Today, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health, the survey shows how health care and health insurance systems can fail to protect people when they are most in need. Having health insurance at all times during treatment helped to limit the financial consequences of a cancer diagnosis, but even those with consistent coverage faced difficulties--one in five used up all or most of their savings, one in 10 borrowed money from relatives, and 9% were contacted by a collection agency.
“This is one of the most disturbing of the hundreds of surveys we have done,” said Kaiser Family Foundation president and CEO Drew E. Altman, PhD. “When people with cancer are deferring care and experiencing such serious financial hardships because of inadequate insurance or because they have no health insurance, it casts a new light on the need to address our nation’s health insurance problems.”
